DOVER — Capt. Bill Breault of the Dover Police Department will be featured on the Investigation Discovery channel tonight in a program detailing the August 2008 murder-for-hire of Dover resident David King.

The 30-minute episode, entitled “Very Bad Investments,” is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. as part of the Investigation Discovery series “Redrum,” which chronicles unusual murders in an unconventional way.

The episode preview reads: “David King is a father of three who has recently moved in with a new girlfriend in small town New Hampshire. David is happy and thinks that this will be a good fit. But, what he doesn't know is that she may have some baggage that could prove deadly.”

And deadly it was.

King was killed in the basement of his house at 81 Old Dover Road on the evening of Aug. 29 by two men from Massachusetts. Using a rifle, they shot King in the head and then slit his throat with a switchblade and lacerated his chest when they thought he might still be alive.

The pair had been hired by Roy Saunders, also of Massachusetts, the ex-husband of King's girlfriend of five years, Dianna Saunders. Dianna Saunders had asked her ex-husband to kill King. In turn, Roy Saunders hired his son, Derek Saunders and Derek's roommate, Scott Mazzone, to commit the murder before King was to move to Texas with Saunders and her children. They were paid a total of $7,500 to commit the murder.

The murder was planned by Dianna Saunders, according to the police investigation, because King had threatened to go to police with his knowledge of her stealing $350,000 from her former real estate partner, Dr. William Meredith. And, say police, she wanted to use the money from a life insurance policy on King to cover the money she had stolen.

According to court testimony and as reported in Foster's Daily Democrat, between October 2007 and January 2008 Dianna Saunders funnelled $350,000 from a joint account she had with Meredith into at least six other bank accounts that were in her name.

She used the money to buy a home in Texas and pay off the mortgage on her Dover home. She also used the money for other personal purchases.

On March 7, 2011, after three weeks of testimony and four days of jury deliberation, Dianna Saunders was convicted of four charges. She received an automatic life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder and got 30 years for conspiracy to commit murder. She got 7½ to 15 years each for the Class A felonies of theft by misapplication and theft by unauthorized taking.

Her sentence also required that she pay $350,000 in restitution to her former real estate partner and cover the cost of King's funeral.

Breault said the Investigation Discovery chose to do an episode on the King murder because of the unusual nature of the case. He said women rarely hire someone to commit murder, and killing to collect life insurance to cover up a theft helps make the case even more unusual.

“The twists and turns of the case made it a market of interest to the public,” he said.

Breault, then a lieutenant, was a lead investigator in the case. Janice Rundles of the State Attorney General's Office also was interviewed for the show.

Breault said representatives of “Redrum” called last June to tell him they were interested in the case. He said was then interviewed for about four hours over a couple of days in late September. He was interviewed in the Dover police station and recalls extensive lighting, background and sound preparations by the show's producers.

During his interview sessions, Breault was asked to recount highlights of the investigation and then was asked hundreds of specific questions about information in public records about the case.

Breault has not yet seen a preview of the show.

(Editor's note: “Redrum” is the reverse spelling of “murder” and was made famous in Director Stanley Kubrick's movie adaptation of the Stephen King novel, “The Shining.”)